home is wherever i'm with you
by hell0dair
Summary: Set in Mockingjay after Johanna's breakdown on the Block. Katniss comes to visit her and Johanna tries to tell her she'll miss her. Title taken from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.


I knew she'd come, eventually. Finnick had told me how the color had drained from her face after Haymitch told them; how he could see the _this is my fault_ written across her face before the words were even out of her mentor's mouth. I had been surprised she hadn't come with him, and it was difficult to mask the disappointment on my face when he'd hurried in, alone, especially with the morphling they'd forced on me dulling my emotions and my reaction time.

_Damn, and I'd just kicked the stuff, too,_ I think as my eyes graze up my arm, past the glinting silver needle taped to the crook of my elbow. I'm making a show of being fascinated by the slow dripdripdrip of the tubing and hushhush of the surrounding machinery so the next person to come through the door to check up on me will think I've been thoroughly sedated and not try to force to me talk about it. My mind flashes briefly to the morphlings from Six, painting each other's faces in the Training Center with not a care in the world. However, that memory cuts a red-hot swath through my chemical calm and threatens to drag me back to the dripdripdrip and hushhush of another white room, another underground prison, and I can't turn my mind off, all the drugs in Thirteen couldn't turn my mind off, so I force my eyes shut and hope that the sedation makes me rest. Not sleep, no, never sleep, but at least the enforced stillness and silent numbness of a body immune to physical pain.

I am trying to count backwards from a hundred, something one of the head doctors recommended I do to try and trick my subconscious into going blank, when I hear the sound of the automatic doors of the room swishing open and shut again. Of course, here in all-for-one, one-for-all District Thirteen, they'd never heard of a private hospital room until the Victors came along. After that, it was pretty much a necessity; never knew when we merry murderers would start to thrash or scream or claw at our arms until they bled and there was no reason to inflict us on the other patients. After all, convalescence, they tell me, is supposed to be peaceful.

I didn't hear anyone come in, but I maintain my pose of false sedation in case it's someone here to check my medication or probe my subconscious in the name of recovery. Like I ever truly recovered after they pulled me from that glass-walled terrarium called an arena and forced me to service the people who once had just been another giant, tapping on the glass.

I hear a snuffle, and then the sound of tears being hastily wiped away and replaced with more. I put two and two together – who's the brainless one now? – and realize that my silent-footed visitor is the only one I've been waiting to see. Katniss.

"Johanna, I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. This is all my fault," she whispers, believing herself to be alone with a sleeping woman. No one to hear her cries for absolution but the whirring machines and the stoic walls.

She reaches for my hand, lifting it to her lips and ghosting silent prayers of _I'm sorry_ and _forgive me_ and _I'll kill him_ on my palm. She brought with her the smell of the forest; that same smell she always seems to carry, whether in the Capitol or that candy-colored jungle or here, deep, deep underground. She smells like fresh earth and sun filtering through pine and the tang of leaves as they crunch underneath your feet. But today, all of these aromas are magnified, like I'm there with her, like _she's_ been there, and before I can stop myself, my eyes snap open.

"Glad to see you finally found your way down, brainless. Would have thought you'd gotten lost if I didn't know you'd spent so much time here."

She fixes me with one of these Katniss-patented smirks and drops my hand. She rummages in her pocket for a second and pulls out a small, bleached cotton package. "Here," she says, "I made this for you."

It only takes me a second to recognize why her smell was so intoxicating; why suddenly, my entire room has been engulfed in the familiar scent of pine – I hold the pouch to my nose and inhale. "It smells like home." This gift, this peace offering, this could be the most generous gift I've ever received. I squeeze my eyes closed as I take another chest-rattling breath, willing my lungs to fill with more air, more pine, more home, more _her_.

As I open my eyes again, it's like I'm taking her in for the first time – sturdy and lithe like my favorite axe, and just as sharp. Her skin like alder, smooth and pliant, and her long hair, braided back, deep and shimmering as black walnut. And her eyes. Her eyes that were as hard to read as the smoke of a well-built campfire, with all of the spark. Before I can stop my words (_how much morphling did they give me, anyway? maybe I'm just a lightweight, yeah, that's it)_ they come rushing out of my mouth:

"Katniss. _You_ smell like home. You're as much home as I've ever had. You have to kill Snow. You have to come back. I can't lose you too."

I watch her eyes as my words settle in the space between us. Her smoke signals are as unreadable as ever, and I can feel my heart settling into the emptiness of my stomach. I'm just about to close my eyes again, restart my backwards count (_I think I left off at 67_) when she stands up and closes the space between us. Suddenly, her lips are on mine and I feel her slight weight dip the side of the thin hospital mattress. Her calloused hand runs up the inside of my arm as she darts her tongue out, striving to gain entrance to my mouth.

And I do the thing I never do… I give in. I give into the salty, earthen scent of her skin, and deepen the kiss. Because I have nothing else to do. I have nothing else to give. And I have no way of ensuring her safety if I can't be there, if I can't watch her back. So I give in.

She pulls away first, straightening her arm so that she can look me square in the eyes. "Johanna. I'm going to kill Snow. I'm going to end this."

And all I can think of is how scared I am. How scared I've _always_ been. And how never, not once, has that ever stopped me before. So instead of answering, instead of encouraging, instead of saying anything, I reach around with my left hand and pull out the morphling tube in one quick jerk.

I pull Katniss to me, wrapping my arms around her thin waist and finding her lips again. This kiss is different, because I'm in control. There is want, yes, but there is also need and sorrow and _goodbye._ Soon, I can feel her trembling fingers working at the ties on the back of my grey hospital gown. I pull forward, just a bit, to free myself of it, and work on pulling her hunting shirt over her head.

If there's anything to be said about the Mockingjay, she is good at three things – being awkward, being ridiculously and suicidally selfless, and getting me out of my clothes. I think of all the times that she's managed to get me naked and laugh lightly into her mouth.

"What's so funny?" she breathes, as she traces her fingertips along the wings of my shoulder blades.

"I just find it funny that you, the pure one, the Symbol of the Rebellion, manage to _always_ be the first to get my clothes off."

"I wouldn't be so easy if you didn't always seem to be halfway to naked, anyway."

The time for banter has ceased, however; after managing to work her way out of her impossibly tight (and might I say, _impractical_) green hunting pants, Katniss curls against my side on the small hospital cot. Our lips meet again, but only just, before her mouth is traveling down my neck, settling on the juncture of my shoulder. Her left hand has found its way to my breast, and she thumbs my nipple in time with her nips on my neck.

"Katniss," I whisper, as I let my head fall back to the pillow. _Fuck counting backwards, this is the real way to wipe your mind blank_, I think. I make a mental note to make the head doctor aware of his mistake.

I let my hands slide up Katniss' waist, interrupting her as she blazes a trail of warm kisses and soft eyelashes back up my neck. Before she can object, I shift my weight and move over her, bracing my knees on either side of her hips as I take her in. _Home._ She must notice my eyes raking her body, because she quails a bit under my gaze.

"Johanna?" she trembles, searching my face. Again, my words seem to fail me. So I dip my head to her breast, taking her warm brown nipple into my mouth and laving it with my tongue. As I move to her other breast, I risk a glance up to her face. All trace of doubt has been wiped from her eyes as her head is thrown back, stray hairs ghosting her forehead and settling on the pillow. _Home._

I work my way down her body, placing kisses on any random patch I can reach – whispering silent hymns of protection over her heart, her hip, her breastbone. I settle myself between her legs, prising them open as I watch her chest began to heave. Again, I inhale her scent as I kiss up her thigh, working a reverent moan from her lips. _Home._

I wrap my hands around her hips to steady her as my lips find her center to taste the honey coating her thighs. As I take her swollen clit into my mouth, I try to memorize her scent, her taste, the curves of her body… any part of her that I can keep with me, that I can keep safe. I feel her begin to treble under my hands; I move one hand from her hip and shift her right leg over my shoulder. Slowly, I tease open her folds with two fingers before finally joining with her. Another keening moan is ripped from her throat as I take up a steady rhythm, willing her to feel as much pleasure as I can, hoping that she knows how much I'm not saying, and praying that she understands that this is the best I can do.

I crook my fingers into the deepest part of her, and lave her clit with my tongue until I feel her come apart in my hands. As she comes, her release coats my hand and she snakes her fingers into the short scruff of my hair as she cries my name. _Johanna._ It sounds so perfect coming from her lips.

I tease the last bits of her pleasure from her in short shocks as I slowly remove my fingers and tenderly kiss her folds before I lick her clean with the flat of my tongue. As I move back up the cot, she places her hands on my face and looks deep into my eyes again.

I'm not one for long goodbyes, even if I refuse to believe that this is one. Plus, I've already said too much today. Must be the morphling. Instead, I put everything I cannot say into my eyes as I attempt to pull a Katniss-patented smirk and tell her, "Try not to die, brainless. I think I might actually miss you."


End file.
